Thursday, September 03, 2009

+ Dear Pop Culture World, please stop punching me in the gut for maybe 10 seconds or so. I lose my mind when I see stuff like this:

Yes, that's right -- it's a newly designed cover for Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, made to look like the cover of a Twilight novel! With a badge that reads, "Bella and Edward's favorite book." I'll just let that sink in for a moment or two. *whistles* Yes! Exactly! It's a crime against literature, one that nearly resulted in my head shooting off my body when I saw it on Topless Robot this morning. HarperCollins, you sadden me...except for those few seconds when I gleefully imagined the disappointment felt by people who will read this book all the way through only to find there are exactly zero vampires living out there on the moors. Haha, suckers!

+ In less disturbing news, Cinema Blend has a nifty fall movie preview. I'm really looking forward to Soderbergh's "The Informant!" (because it's a Matt Damon movie with an exclamation point in the title), "Where the Wild Things Are" (because the trailers look amazing), "Amelia" (because, let's face it, she was pretty cool and also there's Christopher Eccleston), "The Men Who Stare at Goats" (Clooney as faux Jedi!), "2012" (aircraft carrier runs over White House - who thinks this stuff up?), "Sherlock Holmes" (shirtless Robert Downey Jr.) and "Alvin and the Chipmunks 2: The Squakquel" (just kidding...sort of...I really like animated rodents. It's a thing.). What movies are you looking forward to the most?

Sadly, I have seen every one of those images before and knew exactly where the cats should be. Sigh. I really need a job. Anyway, to mitigate the pain of a day without cats, Urlesque is offering to blog on a different animal of their readers' choice. I voted for the rodents, but I'm thinking the goats might be good too. Cast your ballot today!

I'd love it if the girls who think Twilight is good literature read Wuthering Heights and their brains melted out their ears. I can't imagine people who are well read can still find Twilight worth their time. Perhaps I expect too much of humanity?

I read The Lovely Bones earlier this year and instantly fell in love with it. When I found out Peter Jackson was directing the film adaption to be released this December, I was overjoyed...and then immediately crushed to find that Mark Wahlberg will be playing the father. Mark. Wahlberg. I'm still looking forward to it but with a healthy amount of skepticism.

And speaking of healthy amounts of skepticism, and also since I'm a glass is half empty... with a crack in it, kind of person, I'd say prepare to say goodbye to sci-fi on SyFy. Once a network decides to re-brand its image (name change etc.) and starts down the greasy path of reality, it usually moves away from what it used to be known for, even if the name is still still some bastardization of the concept.

Ooh, that Wuthering Heights cover is funny! Though I suppose my reaction is not as strong as some here because (1) I rather liked the Twilight books (particularly book #4), and (2) if I recall correctly, either Bella or Edward (or both?) had some negative stuff to say about Emily Bronte's masterwork...which is one reason why that cover strikes me as funny...

In any case, I should think few who loved Twilight would much care for Wuthering Heights. (Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice, on the other hand...)

As to what movies we're all looking forward to: I can't wait to see 9 and Sherlock Holmes!

The Guardian had a story about the Bronte cover earlier in the week which mentioned that a least some Twilight fans who bought Wuthering Heights felt a little cheated ...

Red Cochina, I too was a bit surprised by the casting of Wahlberg in Lovely Bones. But I wasn't too keen on the original choice for the role either -- Ryan Gosling. He was only like 25 when they cast him as the father of a teenager!

People who love Twilight should love Wuthering Heights - the main characters are self-absorbed, sadistic, romantically obsessed bastards with nothing good in their worlds apart from clinging to each other. It's an ideal transition from bad writing about bad people to good writing about bad people.

Tracy, I love Ryan Gosling but you're right. As a father of teenagers...not so believable. I don't have anything against Mark Wahlberg per se, he just falls into the Keanu Reeves category of actor for me. Moderately good looking with a limited range, great for action movies. I liked him in Shooter. But pulling off the heavy drama required for Bones? Eh.

I'm not writing him off completely. More hoping I'll be pleasantly surprised. And that I won't hear "Hi donkey! Say hi to your mom!" every time he is on screen.

Nice post. It is always good to see people doing new and innovative things. I would like to suggest you a similarly innovative magazine - PEOPLE MATTERS started by an Indian School of Business (ISB)Hyderabad Alumni, which was suggested to me by a friend.

It deals with various important aspects of management, especially those related to Leadership & People Management, which the mainstream business publications often ignore.

It's also relatively cheap. I guess its annual subscription is about Rs. 400 which is even less than the cost of a standard Pizza.

Their last issue had a really educative article by Robert Kaplan (the father of Balanced Scorecard method) where he talks about how organisations can create opportunities out of current economic downturn.

I got its subscription online through their website: http://www.peoplematters.in

I can only just imagine legions of Twilight fangurlz trying to read two pages of Wuthering Heights and just going "huh?" OTOH, maybe it will lead them to the Kate Bush song, LOL. : ) [And I say this as someone who actually enjoyed the Twilight series as trashy, cheesy fun, but doesn't take it too seriously].

A better "transition" book from Twilight to "real" fiction/ literature might be Du Maurier's "Rebecca"--you get the excellent writing quality and some superficial similarities (shy young woman in crazy love with a mysterious older guy and trying to cope in a world where she feels completley overwhelmed/ out of place), but the language is more modern and the narrative more accessible than WH. IMO, of course. Though the "implied-but-not-directly-stated" ending still might cause some heads to explode.

I really hope the new Sherlock Holmes movie is good. The combination of RDJ as Holmes and Jude Law as Watson is worth the price of admission, but I refuse to plunk down my cash unless the movie as a whole is good. I'm strange like that. ; )

I won't lie, I saw this republishing Bronte nonsense and suddenly I had an apostrophe. Er, an epiphany. Twilight is to Wuthering Heights as Baz Lurman was to Shakespere. It's the hip version. I like Twilight, despite the things I don't like about it, and defending that is not my point. My point is, Wuthering Heights was so damned depressing I actually didn't finish it. My thought was something along the lines of "if I wanted to slit my wrists, I'd go and look up genocide stats in Africa", not sit down all cozy with something that, in theory, I adore - a book. And like Heathcliffe and Caroline (what that even her name?), Bella and Edward are only happy when they're making each other miserable. If you want someone to make a smart decision based on their future happiness, you don't ask Bella Swan, because she'll choose the guy who knew better than she did about what she wants and doesn't want to see her or talk to her, but will kill himself if he finds out she's not around anymore for him to NOT see and NOT talk to etc. From what I remember, they're practically the same people. Of course, I am purposely remembering as little as possible, so I could be getting it wrong. Or maybe I'm still bitter that Meyer pulled a "well you're okay, but when my boyfriend gets back, I'm dumping you" on pretty much the most well-developed character she had. And then, instead of leaving him alone to nurse his broken heart, she had him fall for his best girl's...baby girl. Ugh. Insult to injury much?

Ok. I'm done. Horrified, but done all the same. Harper should be ashamed...but if they are, the dissenters have been bound and gagged in the basement until the first printing runs out.